‘The government should address the core allegations of 12 claimants who say they were kidnapped, tortured, subject to control orders or tricked into travelling to Libya where they were detained or mistreated, a high court judge has said.’

‘Suspected terrorists subject to control orders and terrorism prevention and investigation measures who brought proceedings for abuse of process relating to the manner in which they were removed to the United Kingdom from Somaliland were entitled to see the Secretary of State’s objections to their case for alleged collusion and mistreatment. The Secretary of State was not permitted to confine reasons for rejecting their case on those issues to a closed judgment. The applicants and the public should not be denied all knowledge of the extent to which their factual and/or legal case was accepted or rejected. Such a total denial offended justice and propriety.’

“European human rights judges have told ministers to justify the use of a ‘control order’ against a suspect MI5 believe to be linked with a Libyan terrorist group, in a move which raises new questions about Strasbourg’s influence over British justice.”

“Where it was alleged that illegal actions of state agents constituted an abuse of the process of the court, it was not necessary to prove actual knowledge of that illegality for abuse of process to be established. There might be situations where mere recklessness or even negligent conduct could justify a stay on grounds of abuse of process.”

“Where a court made a non-derogating control order in proceedings against a person under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, it had no jurisdiction to order a permanent stay of such proceedings under the Act nor under its case management powers in the Civil Procedure Rules, unless the controlled person requested such a course of action.”

“The Court of Appeal has upheld a challenge to a control order on the basis that the person subject to the order (‘the controllee’) had not been given sufficient information about the case against him.”

“The Home Secretary Theresa May was lambasted last week for an inaccurate reference to cats, but the more general view expressed by her and most of the media that the Human Rights Act is routinely getting in the way of national security interests is also arguably misleading.”

“The government has been accused of bungling national security policy after announcing plans for the ‘internal exile’ of terrorism suspects in the event of an emergency. Civil liberties groups said the new powers were restrictions that ministers had said they would scrap for breaching human rights. Labour claimed the policy was now a mess and that ministers were ‘putting political deals and fudges ahead of national security.’ ”

“On an appeal under section 10(1)(4) of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 against the renewal of a non-derogating control order, it was not part of the court’s task to determine whether the earlier decision under section 2(1)(a) to make the original control order had been or was now flawed. Evidence sought to be adduced for that purpose was not admissible.”